The First Raven Mocker: Book One of the Cherokee Chronicles

Clan

CHAPTER

1

The four souls of the victim reside in his saliva, blood, bile, and bone marrow. By consuming them, whatever life the victim would have had now belongs to the Raven Mocker.

THE OLD CHEROKEE UKU sat at the edge of the precipice high above his village as daylight waned and darkness approached. Sister Sun relaxed as she ended her long journey across the sky vault and breathed a cooling sigh sweeping away the sweltering heat. It was not the darkness of night that disturbed him, but the dark world of witchcraft now confronting him. Adanvdo Alsgia, Dances with Spirits closed the gap on his white, feathery cape and ignored the tickle on his nose as the feathers danced in the chilling breeze. He listened closely to the footsteps shuffling across the well-worn, rocky path. The intruder paused quietly behind him saying nothing but audibly breathing heavily. The old Uku could sense the nervousness and dread of his visitor. Come sit with me, Grandson. Tell me what troubles your heart.

The young apprentice approached and awkwardly lowered his tall, lanky body to sit beside his great grandfather. Rocking noisily back and forth, he pulled his heavy bear cape out from under him enough to enshroud himself. The old man waited patiently for him to get comfortable. He knew the question the young man had come to ask; the question he had dreaded answering; the question that could change everything.

Young Ahyeli-a had been the ideal student all his life. He had earned his name Mimic as a child because of his amazing memory and ability to repeat verbatim the stories told him by his grandmother. He had tagged along with his great grandfather faithfully absorbing all that the wise old Uku could teach him about medicine, conjures, connecting with the spirits, restoring balance and harmony to those who had faltered or had the thing put under them and needed help returning to wellness.

Ahyeli-a had mastered the white way and in time would become a wise healer and perhaps even replace his great grandfather as Uku, the highest position a medicine man and priest can achieve in his village. But, his training would not be complete until he also mastered the dark ways. To defeat witchcraft, the Uku must know the dark ways as well as the witch. But the dark ways had tempted and turned many attracted to the allure of its magic. This was what Adanvdo feared.

Who is Kalanu Akyeliski? Why is he called Raven Mocker?

The Uku shifted uncomfortably, Tsigili. he whispered, spitting out the word in disgust. He wanted there to be no doubt that a witch was something to be despised.

Ahyeli-a frowned and studied the old Uku as he waited for the explanation. His teacher took a deep breath to control his hatred before starting his curious apprentice down that dark path of knowledge.

He doesn’t MOCK the raven, he BECOMES the raven.

Adanvdo shifted and pulled his cape even closer, using the cape subconsciously more for security than for warmth. He anticipated the question his great grandson dared not interrupt him to ask. You will be able to distinguish him from a common raven. When he flies, his wings and tail blaze, leaving a trail of sparks.

A fiery meteorite streaked across the sky catching the attention of the two, on edge because of the troublesome subject. Ahyeli-a looked questioningly at his mentor. The mentor’s gaze remained on the spot where the streaking, fiery stone had flamed out. He didn’t believe in coincidences and he had taught that lesson to his apprentice. But, he wasn’t sure himself what the meaning of this occurrence was. Was it significant? A sign? It was in any case awkward timing. He decided to store the event in the back of his mind and consider its significance later.

For Ahyeli-a’s benefit, Adanvdo shook his head dismissing the event, refocused on the fading mountain peaks in the distance and then continued the lesson in a whisper. The Raven Mocker seeks out the weak or frail and enters their house unseen to torment them—to literally scare them to death. Invisible, he may shake their bed, pull things from the wall, or even pick up his victim and hurl them to the floor. He may shape-shift into a ferocious panther or horrifying bear. Then, at that critical moment of death, he sucks their dying breath from them as he plunges his fist into their chest to extract their heart, liver and rib bone.

Remembering the look on his great grandson’s face when they examined the Raven Mocker’s latest victim, he was compelled to explain, Afterwards, no trace of the entry is visible on the chest of the victim.

He anticipated his clever student’s next question … The four souls of the victim reside in his saliva, blood, bile, and bone marrow. By consuming them, whatever life the victim would have had now belongs to the Raven Mocker.

On a rocky crag cut into the face of a sheer cliff, Kalanu Akyeliski, the Raven Mocker, sat beside a sterile pond staring into the water-covered crystal shimmering in his bluish, diseased hand. Within could be seen images of the two men perched high over the precipice. Sadly, he placed his dripping crystal back into the netted pouch of his necklace. Is that what I am, Adanvdo?

How had his life come to this? He had never intended to become the most dreaded and hated tsigili ever to walk the face of the earth. Sadly, the lonely, decrepit old witch pushed himself up and pulled his tattered, black, ravenfeathered cape tightly around his chilled, withering, fragile body and limped into his small, seven-sided hut.

He stoked the smoldering embers in his hearth until they glowed red and ignited. He laid a handful of twigs on the fragile flames followed by a small log. He had dealt with loneliness all his life. His proud, stoic father had been a loner who spent little time with him. His flighty, self-centered mother had treated him as a nuisance and a pest. Living deep in the woods and far from any village or other family, he had been forced to find solace alone in the forest.

His mind drifted back to his thirteenth summer. A time before his journey down the dark path, before his name was Raven Mocker, when he was known as Ugidahli Unega, White Feather. The summer when his father had failed to return one night from a hunting trip, and his mother had, against his objections, taken him forceably into the village to stay with his mother’s family while his uncle led the search to find his father. He had despised the village with its precocious residents and complex social customs. Then the decrepit old witch smiled at a memory. That’s when I first saw her.

CHAPTER

2

He gasped in horror at the fleshless face with empty eye sockets staring back at him.

SHE WAS, IN HER every movement, the most fascinating thing Ugidahli Unega had ever seen. She captured his complete attention. Hiding behind a Blue Holly bush, he studied her every detail, the way she carried her basket in the crook of her arm as if it were contaminated and she loathed it touching her; the way she picked each strawberry and examined it before placing it in the basket or taking a bite. The way she closed her eyes and bit into the tip of the strawberry enclosing it with her lips and sucking to make sure no juices spilled off; the way she enjoyed its taste as she slowly chewed the crunchy, luscious fruit. Nothing on earth compared to her beauty and her appeal.

As the lithesome beauty strolled to the next strawberry bush, her skirt swaying with each step as she pushed her long, shiny black hair back from her face, her beautiful, dark, round eyes stared into the sky at nothing in particular. As she moved to his left, leaning to keep her in his view, he lost his balance and fell into the bush where he was hiding. Repositioning himself, he kept watching her to see if she had seen or heard him. She stopped chewing only momentarily before continuing on as if she had not heard him. He thought he detected a slight, fleeting smile on her perfect lips before she disappeared into the forest.

Love-struck, he rocked back, embraced his legs, rested his chin on his knees, and sat dreaming of this wondrous creature. Images of her fleeting smile; her swaying hips; her lips embracing the luscious fruit flashed through his mind. Fire stirred in his stomach and desire filled him. His solitary life in the forest, away from village life, had not prepared him for this.

Distant voices interrupted his fantasy. Something was happening. Maybe the search party had returned with his father. The anxious boy leaped to his feet and raced toward the village, zigzagging through the thick forest up the incline over the crest and down the slope, reaching the edge of the bluff overlooking it. He looked down on the villagers pouring into the valley from the fortress-like compound. The focus of the crowd was on the small search party carrying a body in a make-shift stretcher.

Father? he whispered.

He raced down the grassy slope to join the onlookers but he stumbled, fell and rolled down into the unsuspecting crowd. When they saw it was Ugidahli Unega, they respectfully parted allowing him through. They knew the recovered body was his father. He gasped in horror at the hideous sight on the stretcher. A fleshless face with empty eye sockets stared back at him and the bloody, shredded chest cavity of the corpse, was now devoid of organs. Who is this? Where’s my father?

Opposite the search team, his mother’s scream was heard. Her brothers were holding her on either side as her head flopped back and her body went limp. Yona Utana … Yona Utana … She chanted her husband’s name over and over.

He was confused. Where was his father? What happened to the poor person on the carrier? He stood shocked as the procession passed him. Ugidahli ran to his uncle, Awi-e Usdi. Where’s Father? Didn’t you find Father?

Turning, he glared at his nephew and placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. With lips trembling, his eyes turned to the dead man on the carrier. Ugi, that IS your father.

Ugi looked at the mutilated corpse on the carrier. That was not his father. Why did they think this skinny remnant was Yona Utana—the Great Bear. His father was a huge man.

The crowd hushed and moved back to make room for three elders and a younger man with a round, baby face, puffy cheeks and dark, beady eyes. The four men huddled around the carrier to study the body. One elder turned to Awi-e Usdi. What has happened here?

Awi-e Usdi, in his most authoritative manner, said, We found him beside the carcass of the deer he had slain. He must have been carrying it home on his shoulders at night, prompting the night predators to attack.

The inquiring elder nodded gratefully to Awi-e Usdi and looked back sadly at the corpse. Ugidahli Unega wanted to protest. Couldn’t they see that this was not his father?

The younger man whispered, Cannibal.

The elders waved the procession on. The stunned boy stood immobile as the crowd filed in through the palisaded village entrance. Their murmurs subsided as the last of the procession disappeared into the compound, leaving thick clouds of dust to rise and spread. Gritty dirt peppered his sweaty face and filled his nose. He opened his mouth and licked the salty powder from his lips as the cloud began to disperse. Amazed, he observed a white, ghost-like apparition slowly appear in the midst of the vanishing cloud. Ugidahli Unega’s heart began to pump and consciousness flooded back into his brain.

There she was again. The girl from the strawberry patch was standing there, with her weight shifted to one side and one leg slack, the basket of strawberries dangling below one extended arm, the other crooked with her hand holding back her long, black hair dancing around her face in the swirling dust driven by the wind. Her dark, impassionate eyes studied the devastated boy.

The power of the moment overwhelmed him; he began to tremble, and tears gushed from his eyes. He dropped his head into his hands to hide his weakness. Then, quickly wiping his face and getting hold of himself, he took a deep breath, straightened up and bravely looked back to find only a dirt devil swirling where the girl had once stood.

Ugidahli Unega dropped to his knees and wept again.

CHAPTER

3

The plants and the animals were friends of sorts in that they never chastised him the way his mother did. But they never consoled him nor offered advice the way the tiny little man did.

THE SHADE FROM THE overhanging tree and the spray from the babbling stream was a cool relief from the heat of the day. Sister Sun was now heading down the sky vault on the last half of her journey. Seeking answers from the stream and the whispering pines, Ugidahli Unega sat on a wet boulder listening patiently. The no-nonsense attitude of the rushing water passed him with no concern for his crisis. The breeze blowing through the cottonwoods making the leaves clatter, usually reminded him of rain falling, but this morning they were laughing at him. Even the vibrant flowers looked dull and held back the sweet perfume in preference for the pungent odor of mud and dead grass.

He IS dead, you know.

Ugidahli jerked around. It was his little friend the Yunwi Tsunsdi. The plants and the animals were friends of sorts in that they never chastised him the way his mother did. But they never consoled him nor offered advice the way the tiny little man did. His grandmother had once warned him not to speak of the Yunwi Tsunsdi. She explained that they were very private people who lived in the caves high in the mountains where they spent their days singing and dancing and playing tricks on wayward travelers who unwittingly ventured too close. She told him that the Yunwi Tsunsdi could make themselves invisible if they wanted and usually only appeared to little children who needed their help.

It had been many summers since he had been visited by his little friend and had assumed that he had grown too old to be helped anymore.

But Father was too powerful to be defeated by a panther. He killed panthers and bears.

The gust rattled the trees violently bending the branches to block the boy’s view of the Yunwi Tsunsdi. Did the little wizard answer? Had he angered him?

As the breeze faded and the branches danced back to their relaxed position, only gray hair remained draped across the stair-stepped stones where he had been sitting. The desperate boy rubbed his eyes in hopes that they were deceiving him, but only the gray strands of mossy hair lay before him. The dwarf had always told him the truth, even when it was not what he wanted to hear. But this time his little friend was wrong.

Sullen and defeated, he trudged slowly back to his aunt’s house. It was a rectangular, gabled, frame house, coated with smooth, fresh mud plaster. The cypress bark shingles still smelled sweet on the newly built house. As he entered the main room through the front door, his mother’s wails echoed through the shadowy, sparsely decorated room. Her shadow danced on the walls as she rocked back and forth beside the unattended embers slowly burning down in the hearth. A sweet, fruity smell like carrot mixed with a sour, rotten odor attacked his nostrils. He traced the smells to the corpse of his father lying on a wood bench against the back wall where his aunt, his mother’s sister, Awinita, was busy cleaning the body with a mixture of water and willow root. The smell was overpowering.

Could that frail remains really be his father? He tried to imagine his father’s face on the bare frame of the skull. The shoulders were broad but the decimated chest and stomach were too shallow. Then he saw it. The handle of his father’s distinctive knife sheathed and strapped to his side. The chill in his chest left him numb and anxious.

He slipped back out of the house. He rubbed the nape of his neck as a warm breeze lifted his hair slightly and tickled his sweaty neck. His aunt stepped out behind him. Don’t go far, Ugi, we must go to your house and pull all of your father’s things out tonight.

Ugi shivered and began to tremble, Why?

All of his possessions are defiled now.

His lower lip stiffened, Why?

The soft-hearted aunt, only a few years his senior stepped up to hug her troubled nephew. Oh, Ugi, I know it is hard, but your father is gone now. You must release his spirit so it can find its way to the upper world.

Ugi pulled away and turned to his aunt, Where is my father? Who is that in there?

His startled aunt teared up. Her soft, round face wrinkled as she hugged herself tightly, Ugi. That IS your father in there. Didn’t they tell you?

That’s not Father. Father was a giant.

His aunt shivered; she was aghast at her nephew’s denial. She hesitated before responding. Come back in, Ugi, and comfort your mother. She needs you right now.

He didn’t want to comfort his mother. He wanted to flee from these ignorant people who couldn’t, for some strange reason, see that the man on the bench was not his father.

Tears streamed from his eyes as he clenched his fists and held his stiff arms close to his sides. His aunt grimaced and